I’ve always been close to my older sister Julie. There is barely a year between us and as we grew up, we did pretty much everything together – including getting into trouble, of course!
Neither mum nor dad was above giving us a smacked bottom when we misbehaved, although in later years dad pretty much left mum to deal with us – I guess he felt it wasn’t appropriate for a father to spank his daughters past a certain age. The smacking always hurt – mum had a good hard hand – and we always had a damn good cry afterwards. If it was just one of us who had got their arse tanned, the other would always be there to console her.